When I was a PhD student (mid 90s), reviews were something that you could find in three or four journals: Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research and Tetrahedron were the usual places. But today, the good reviews come up in the most unexpected places, even in journals that are in theory devoted to the publication of short works, or letters.
This is the case with this nice review by Yajun Zheng et al. (Vitae Pharmaceuticals, USA). Published in the Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, they cover in only 10 pages a type of structures that was hard to find in medicinal chemistry some years ago, but which are becoming more and more common: spirocyclic scaffolds. They have some unique advantages and preparing them can be very regarding… or very stressful. In GalChimia we have some experience on preparing these scaffolds and I confess that I never expected to think about the Baldwin’s rules after my PhD.
The use of spirocyclic scaffolds in drug discovery
Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 2014, 24, pp 3673-3682.
See: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2014.06.081
